THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
LUKE VIII: 5-15.
Jesus may have seen a farmer sowing seed, and, directing the attention of the people to him, uttered this parable. He took the commonest and most familiar facts and occurrences and made them the means of expressing the great truths of His kingdom. So His ministers should try to do now—teach the truth of God in language easily understood by the men addressed.
He divides the hearers of the word into four classes: be ready then to decide in which class you are, for you are certainly in one.
1. The seed which fell on the hard beaten path is the word preached to men who do not receive any impression at all from hearing it.
They have forgotten it by the time the sound of the preacher's voice has died away. It does not enter their minds and produce any thought; nor their hearts, and produce any feeling.
Are there not thousands of people who go to church, who hear preaching constantly, and yet it produces no effect? They are no better, and they do not try to be.
But in the twelfth verse we find who is the cause of this astonishing indifference and hardness—it is the devil who causes them at once and forever to forget all that is said "lest they should believe and be saved."
There is an unseen adversary, then, who keeps us from thinking about religion all he can. If you do not think about it much, that is a proof that you are under his influence.